Kansas City Adopts Point System For Development Incentives

Kansas City's development incentives policy becomes more structured under a measure passed by the city council Thursday. The city will adopt a scorecard system to determine which projects get incentives and how large those incentives are.

Under the new system development projects score points in five categories. Half the possible points are for jobs provided and wages paid. The rest of the possible 300 points are for amount of capital investment, type of industry, location in the city and enhancements such as being a company headquarters or sustainable design. Councilman Ed Ford explained,“Under Mayor Funkhouser we had developed an economic development incentive policy, but we never could figure out how to score it. And as a result it was ignored."

The scorecard system, he says, will make the policy a reality.

The initial draft scorecard doesn't apply to development that doesn't involve employment, such as housing. The city is working on a companion version for that.